Fence!

Hello there!
I hope everyone’s week is going well.
The sunshine ceased in the last couple of days and its been raining steadily today.
Luckily, got the fence all sorted within a sensational week of sunshine

Sharon’s husband Paul – who knows how to do so many fabulous and excellent things – took on the job of fixing our fence, now that we (the collective ‘we’ meaning Paul, one or two of his friends, myself and Jeff) had finished clearing the timber on the neighbours paddock.

As you can see, this corner of the properties was a bit of a mess, so the other Sunday while Jeff was sleeping, I got in and tried to clear and move as much as possible so when Paul got in the next morning, we’d have a better shot of getting in to work on the fence.

Hmmmm
Chopping, dragging and pulling up clumps of weeds along the fenceline. Lucky with the recent rain, the grass clumps came up without putting up too much of a struggle

I unearthed the tin and steel droppers that we put in ages ago to stop the cows from wandering into our yard.

Cut everything back and dragged them out too

Some of the bigger pieces of timber I couldn’t move without the help of the steel droppers.
I’d watched Paul move huge logs with a long crowbar and took a leaf out of his book

Amazing what you can do with a little leverage!

Felt good to be doing something constructive

There was a lot of timber in under this grass… big and small.
I dragged the bigger ones over to their own pile and Jeff sorted them out with his chainsaw a few days later.

…

Oh… and a bit of blackberry that slowed me up a bit – annoying grabby bitey stuff!

The next morning, Paul came in and helped me finish up clearing out the area

I got the job of rolling up the wire so we could reuse it all again.

A couple of the treated pine posts we were able to set aside and reuse. The rest of the posts we took from what Paul and Co. had milled a few weeks back.
Once the area was clear, Paul dug a whacking great hole for the corner post.
I helped carry this massive beast to its resting spot and I tell you – that was the very limit of my carrying capacity! So heavy!!
Its gone into the ground down about a metre and a half.
Its solid!

…

Well… you can’t really see how deep

Once the corner post was in, Paul ran a string line to one of the other posts that was still part of the fence line to find the places we needed to dig holes

Deep holes

So… as apprentice Hole Digger I managed to almost complete two holes.
Luckily Paul isn’t as slow as I am.

Ahhh… the satisfaction of lots of nice holes haha

And some of the things found whilst digging those holes

So… Tuesday and there is no more hole digging (yay)
I will confess that Paul finished off the two holes I was working on.
Mostly because I was having trouble once they got quite deep getting the soil cleared out. And because he got to the paddock before I did Tues morning!!

Back to putting in posts, filling with broken pieces of cement blocks and soil.
Paul has chiseled out the posts to put in a cross beam as well.

Starting to string the wires back up and things are looking fence-like

The chook wire did get a bit stretched after dropping a few trees on it, but this handy little gadget helped by snicking it all back into place, best and even as we could

Paul has all the cool fencing gadgets for sure!

Morrie, who has the paddocks, stopped by to check things out.
Reckon he was impressed so far. Honestly he needs a medal for being so patient for so long!

Wednesday… Jeff recovered from nightshift usurped my place as Apprentice Fence Builder and got in to help Paul and learn a few more things along the way.

They cut down timber to size and moved it to the fence

They put up the three cross beams and decided to forgo the barbed wire.
Will be completely unnec. with the timber in place

Meanwhile I did more than stand about looking gorgeous (snort)

The old pallet fence that was half mangled by the falling tree then turned into Ugly Fort Knox trying to thwart chooks from flying over needed to come down

So I pulled everything up.
A lot of wire to undo!! Happily the steel droppers came up pretty easily which I wasn’t expecting.
Usually there is a big fight peppered with lots of swear words

We will keep the pallets for now as when Ed comes back with his mill, we will need something to put the milled timber on to store it, so we will use them to set something suitable up.
Now that the fence is down it also means getting the mill in and working in this area will be a lot less hampered.

Well… I reckon Paul did an absolutely fabulous job!
He was very particular on getting it just right and was also really patient teaching both of us useful bits and bobs along the way.

Lucky to have such excellent friends!
Honestly… I dont think anything is going to break through this fence in a hurry!
Morrie must have been totally confident too because he let the cows back into the top two paddocks the very next day!

Cow photos coming soon! They are super cute – and keep rushing up to the fence to stare at us if we go out the back!

Oh… and I have a question…
Groots dodgy Grandpa or an Ent???
Cheers!